President Lula will not be perfect, but he has fulfilled the main task entrusted to him by the electorate. As this New Year marks a year since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, returned to the presidency of Brazil at the height of an extraordinary political resurgence, the country lives in peace. After the turbulent four years of the right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro, democracy has regained momentum and institutional normality prevails. This third Lula term began with Bolsonaro's attempted coup on January 8th – and was neutralized within hours – and ends with a timid tax reform that is historic because the change to the unfair tax system was started more than three decades ago. The fight against hunger – 15% of the population goes to bed with an empty stomach – against poverty and the protection of the Amazon region are again a priority under the Lula government. His predecessor is now disabled.
The experienced president enjoyed the Brazilian economy more than foreign policy. Brazil was welcomed with open arms upon its return to international forums, the improvement in deforestation figures was applauded, but the boomerang effect of mediation attempts in Ukraine highlighted the difficulty of achieving diplomatic success in a much more complex world in his previous term beginning of the century.
From the outside, Latin America's most populous democracy has turned into a kind of oasis of stability, given the earthquake caused by the ultra-liberal Javier Milei in Argentina and the unexpected fear of war in Essequibo due to political calculations by Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, the constitutional ones Ups and downs in Chile and Nayib Bukele's authoritarian tendencies in El Salvador.
The Brazilian president has dedicated this year to realizing his motto of “rebuilding Brazil” after his predecessor's devastation to democracy, institutions, the balance of power and the environment. A part of his voters voted for Lula precisely for this reason, to save democracy from the attacks of Bolsonarism, and not out of unwavering support for his positions and proposals.
Supporters of former President Bolsonaro on January 8 during the attack on the headquarters of the three powers in Brasilia. Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images
His main achievement is to refocus Brazil's political debate on major socio-economic problems and the difficulties of getting enough support to pass laws, rather than barracks humor, criminalization of the opponent or conspiracy theories.
“The comparison effect is of limited duration,” wrote analyst Bruno Boghossian this Sunday in Folha de S.Paulo. “It is worth a lot not to plan a coup, not to threaten the courts, not to waste vaccines, not to destroy the country's reputation, but it is not enough,” he warns.
The lack of a parliamentary majority is the major obstacle currently facing the president and his team. The leader of Brazil's left won the election at the head of a broad coalition to save democracy and heads a cabinet that includes the right. The local elections at the end of 2024 will provide an idea of the balance of political forces in a Brazil emerging from the two-part presidential election.
Bolsonaro, 68, has floundered politically despite narrowly losing the election. In June, judges barred him from running for eight years, barring him from the next two presidential elections. The reason is not his management of the pandemic or the alleged incitement of the coup, but the abuse of power to delegitimize the electoral system for the head of state. After months in the US, Bolsonaro has not taken part in any mass events. His faithful are calling for mobilizations next week to mark the anniversary of the violent attack on the headquarters of the President, the Supreme Court and the Congress in Brasilia. Ultra-Bolsonarism is counting on Milei's victory in Argentina and a hypothetical Donald Trump victory to give it new impetus.
In any case, there are still numerous court cases pending against the former Brazilian president, including one in which the Supreme Court is investigating him for supporting an attempted coup that appeared to be a copy of the attack on the Capitol in Washington. The main perpetrators are sentenced to long prison terms by the Supreme Court. Lula, who fired the army chief two weeks after the unrest, has sought to ease his strained relationship with the military by investing in the defense industry.
The Lula of 2023 is very similar to the Lula of 2003, but has two decades more experience, including his time in prison. When he returned to Planalto Palace, he reformulated, updated and relaunched the programs, fulfilling his promise two decades ago to include the poor in the budget. The Bolsa Familia's anti-poverty aid, the amount of which Bolsonaro spectacularly increased during the pandemic and which Lula has maintained, is essential for millions of families to live in dignity, and the difference from the previous mandate is that it only needs to be collected once Children need to be re-vaccinated and ensure they go to school. For the first time in five years, the minimum wage has risen faster than inflation. The government has launched a huge public investment program worth 320 billion euros to boost economic activity, and fees have been increased to promote higher education access for the poorest and Afro-Brazilians.
The most symbolic moment of the huge popular party into which Lula turned his inauguration on January 1, 2023 was when he climbed the ramp of the presidential palace accompanied by his wife Janja and a handful of Brazilian citizens belonging to underrepresented groups with political power such as women, black people , poor, indigenous or disabled.
Lula and his wife Janja enter the presidential palace with several ordinary Brazilians after the inauguration on January 1, 2023 in Brasilia. Eraldo Peres (AP)
Although he boasted early in his term that a third of the cabinet were ministers, he abdicated three of them to make room for men from parties whose votes are crucial to advancing his legislative agenda. A disappointment for the feminist movements and the most progressive Brazil, which has carried out an impressive public pressure campaign to persuade President Lula to appoint a black woman to one of the two Supreme Court vacancies that he had to fill. In both cases, he placed men he trusted most at the side of the lawyer who freed him from prison and his attorney general.
In the chapter of joys the economy. GDP will end 2023 growing at around 3%, four times more than predicted when Lula took the reins. Unemployment is at its lowest level in almost a decade and inflation continues to weaken. Lula's surprising bet to place his most loyal colleague, the gray and potential successor Fernando Haddad from the Workers' Party, as a strong man in the economy is now considered successful. He and his team managed to get Congress to agree to simplify the baroque tax system and finally introduce a VAT that will be around 27%. For 2024, the gigantic task remains of tackling the mother of the lamb, income tax reform. Another big effort for Lula next year is to expand the support program for the renegotiation of household and business debts that are strangling much of his compatriots.
The Brazilian left has recovered from the trauma of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, whom her mentor also rehabilitated by sending her to Shanghai as president of the BRICS bank. Lula wants to use the G-20 presidency he now holds to help Brazil regain the glory of bygone times.
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